Welfare Reform on the Web (June 2009): Welfare state - overseas

The European Union's global social role

J. Orbie and others

Journal of European Social Policy, vol. 19, 2009, p. 99-116

This symposium analyses the EU's global social role, in particular examining its international promotion of labour standards and its role in the International Labour Organization (ILO). It shows that EU global social policies have evolved from a narrow focus on trade measures to a broader spectrum of soft external policy instruments. The authors address three cases: Europe's role in the elaboration of labour standards within the ILO; its social influence in neighbouring countries; and its international corporate social responsibility policies.

Individualization and the delivery of welfare services: contestation and complexity

A. Yeatman

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

'Individualization' refers to the construction of the individual as the unit of social action. The book argues that this has led to a major rethinking of welfare and the welfare state, away from the construction of the 'needy' citizen as a client of a patrimonial state, towards the conception of all citizens as active users of human services. Bringing together political theory, psychoanalytic theory and social policy, this book poses an original theory of individualization in its implications for the idea of the welfare state. It proposes two distinct and opposing conceptions of the individual as the subject of welfare: the individual as a self and the individual as a will. Arguing that a public conception of welfare makes sense only in relation to the self as the subject of welfare, the book shows that welfare services which facilitate and secure a sense of self emphasize the service delivery relationship.

Public and private social policy: health and pension policies in the New Era

D. Beland and B. Gran (editors)

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

The changing roles of, and the relationships between, public and private social benefits is one of the most important social policy issues of our time. Comparative research can offer unique insights into understanding the changing boundaries between public and private efforts to provide social benefits. Such awareness is especially crucial today, as pushes for market-based social policy are strengthening in a number of advanced industrial countries. This volume contributes to contemporary policy debates, offering a systematic analysis of the public-private dichotomy for social policy and covering four continents and two policy areas: health care and pensions.